The Secrets of Southeast Asia

What? Two posts in the same week?! Yes, and this one includes more pictures:

After a total of 37 days of traveling (including my time in Fujian), I’m finally back in Changsha. The last several weeks were a lot of fun and chock full of learning experiences, but they also drained me of every ounce of energy I had. The last week I have before school starts will be well-spent both resting and getting myself prepared for the semester. Here’s an outline of my trip.

Singapore

My already-late flight was delayed departing Xiamen. Thus, I arrived at my hostel in Singapore at 4am and, despite the forewarning of my late/really early arrival, no one was around to open the door for me. I gave up on ringing the doorbell and decided to find an open convenience store to purchase a SIM card. I finally made it into the hostel and into my bed at 5:30am and was up at 9:30am ready to start my day. I’ve always had trouble sleeping in for too long. My first impression of the city (country) was that it really is as clean as they say it is. There are all sorts of laws about littering and any other irresponsible acts, like selling chewing gum, that diminish other people’s quality of life. My second impression was how multicultural it is. A significant part of the population is ethnically Chinese and there are also a lot of foreigners that live there, but the country really seemed to be a gigantic mixing pot. People who live in Singapore are taught two languages. Instruction in universities is conducted in English, but as kids grow up, they are also taught a second language associated with their background. For example, people who are ethnically Chinese will learn both English and Mandarin. The fact that English is the primary language made it really easy for me to find my way around the city and Mandarin came in handy whenever English wasn’t useful.

In Singapore, like in all of the countries I went to, I spent a LOT of time in museums. For one reason or another, I’ve always enjoyed myself in museums and find it easy to lose myself in reading the placards. My favorite was the Asian Civilizations Museum. It was absolutely huge and a great place to get a better understanding of SE Asia’s history before I went to the other countries on my itinerary. In addition to the museums, I took a boat ride up and down the Singapore River, had a Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel where it was invented, took a ride on the Singapore Flyer (the world’s largest observation wheel), saw the Merlion statue guarding the mouth of the Singapore River, visited the Chinese and Japanese gardens, took a stroll through the National Botanical Gardens (which included the National Orchid Garden), visited the Buddha Tooth Relic (Buddhist) and Sri Mariamman (Hindu) temples, and wandered through Little India and Arab St. When I wasn’t sightseeing, I was eating, but to be honest, Singapore’s food wasn’t particularly exciting. A lot of Singaporean food is actually just Chinese food taken from southern Chinese people who immigrated to Singapore to find work earlier on in its history. Chicken rice is the staple dish (and its admittedly pretty good, despite how bland it sounds), but my favorite was Chilli Crab. I also enjoyed the fresh juice drinks that were readily available from street vendors as well as the dried pork snacks from some Chinatown shops. Unfortunately, I would say the average meal from anywhere besides a hawker stall cost about 15 USD, which is significantly more expensive than pretty much anywhere in Asia. That being said, I could find any kind of food I was craving in Singapore, and it was nice to have so many options.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The first thing I learned is how important of a crop palm trees are for Malaysia’s export industry because of the many different products that can be made with them. We’re not talking the tall, picturesque kind that are prevalent in Hawaii, but rather, the short, stubby kind that are more utilitarian. There were massive groves of palm trees lining the roads for the entire one-hour, $20-dollar taxi drive to my hostel. Kuala Lumpur was an entirely different world than Singapore and felt much more…well-worn. Malay, Chinese, and Indian are the three primary ethnic groups in Malaysia. Islam is the official religion, though Hinduism and Christianity definitely exist. I was actually told by someone I met that both your ethnicity and your religion are both displayed on national ID cards, which I thought was interesting. In KL, I walked an average of 9-10 miles a day, so I became very sensitive to the fact that KL has very few crosswalks and the crosswalks that do exist don’t have working traffic lights for pedestrians. To get around, I literally had to run across high-speed freeways when there were breaks in traffic (sorry mom and dad), but the time I spent playing Frogger must have paid off since I’m still around to tell about it. I saw the Islamic Arts Museum, Malaysian Royal Police Museum, the KL Bird Park (the largest free-flight aviary in the world), the National Museum, the Tian Hou (Buddhist) and Sri Mahamariamman (Hindu) temples, National Independence Plaza, the Menara KL Tower, the Petronas Twin Towers, Central Market, Petaling St. (the Chinese street market area), and Masjid Jamek (one of the city’s better-known mosques). However, my two favorite places were the Batu Caves and the Masjid Negara. The Batu Caves is a Hindu place of worship located in, you guessed it, some caves. The entrance is pretty impressive and has a gigantic statue of Murugan, who is one of the sons of Shiva. I got there pretty early and had the opportunity to watch some sort of ritual that involved the cleaning of some sort of sacred object. I was quite obviously the only non-Hindu present since everyone else was wearing special clothing and either standing in or seated in the temple area, so I didn’t want to interrupt to ask specifics. It was a pretty fascinating experience. I also took a tour of the Dark Cave, which is a nature and wildlife preservation site located in the same area. I’ve never had a fear of bugs, but the cave was home to one of the most terrifying bugs I have ever seen in my life: the cave centipede. You can click here for an example of what they look like. Even better than the Batu Caves, however, was surprisingly my trip to Masjid Negara, or Malaysia’s National Mosque. I was told that the word “mosque” may potentially have a history that makes it a pejorative and was asked to use the word “masjid” instead, which means “place of prostration.” All of the masjids I visited were open to visitors during certain times of the day. When I went to Malaysia’s National Masjid, it was fairly empty of visitors. When one of the volunteers who was stationed at an information table found out I am American, she got really excited and offered to take me on a personal tour. I got the impression she was eager to combat any misperceptions about Islam that I may have held prior to my visit. I got much more history about the masjid than I would have gotten on my own and even got to look down into the prayer room from the balcony, which is normally closed to non-Muslims. She just finished her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies in Turkey, so it was really interesting to hear what she had to say and to see firsthand some of the differences between Islam and Christianity. I learned way more than I had expected and appreciated the enthusiasm and kindness of the woman I met. It’s definitely an experience I’ll remember. As with Singapore, when I wasn’t sightseeing or taking a break, I was eating. The food in Malaysia was pretty good and seemed to have a fairly strong Indian influence with breads and curries, but Chinese food was also readily available.

Jakarta, Indonesia

I think Indonesia would have been my favorite country of the ones I visited if I had gone somewhere other than Jakarta. There are a huge number of ethnic/indigenous groups in Indonesia, many of which have their own languages, traditions, and food. For example, many people have probably heard of Bali, which is a popular tropical vacation destination. Bali is actually not a country—it is an island/province in Indonesia and has its own variations on food, its own dances, and even a different primary religion than Indonesia’s official religion (Hinduism vs. Islam). Jakarta provided only a very, very small window into the cultural richness I think exists in the country. In addition to not highlighting the country’s diversity, Jakarta’s museums, in my opinion, do far less than they could in terms of preserving and showcasing the country’s national history. This being said, I still enjoyed myself. I met two girls in Singapore who are about my age, live in Jakarta, and happened to return from their vacation a day or two before I arrived in their hometown. They offered to show me around the city and took me to several places including Jakarta’s beach, the University of Indonesia where they went to school, and a massive park that has buildings and sights representative of the whole of Indonesia. It was a lot of fun, and they offered some interesting insights into life in Indonesia. The public transportation in Jakarta is still in rather early stages of development, but since traffic in Jakarta is heinous at all hours of the day, it was helpful that they taught me how to use the city buses. While in the city, I also had the opportunity to meet up with one of my dad’s friends who has lived in Southeast Asia for a long time and whose work centers on Southeast Asia. He also offered some interesting perspectives into Indonesian life and dynamics in Southeast Asia more generally. As far as dining goes, the street food was pretty darn good, but my favorite was a restaurant called Lara Djongrang. It was meticulously decorated with Indonesian cultural artifacts, the food was great, and the staff was friendly. I had fried tempe, fish curry, chicken curry, beef curry, and a couple other side dishes with rice followed by a really good dessert with ice and all sorts of fruit. The restaurant was hosting a large group that night that hired Balinese dancers to perform, and since I made friends with the manager prior the group’s arrival, he let me into their dining area to watch. Yes, I know, I’m shameless. Overall, I would characterize my time in Jakarta as very enjoyable and especially so with the people I had the chance to meet with while I was there. However, I hope to go back one day and spend some time in different areas.

Manila, Philippines

I only planned for three days in Manila because it doesn’t have the best reputation as the nicest city in the world…or the safest. However, it was the only place I went where I went non-stop without mid-day breaks and still felt like I could fill up a couple more days with stuff to do. I really, really enjoyed myself. First off, the food was way better than I had expected, and I actually came to look forward to meal times so that I could try what the city had to offer. A pork adobo sandwich and a halo-halo (halo-halo means “mix-mix” and is a dessert of ice mixed with milk, young coconut, various jellies, plantain, beans, and a bunch of other stuff) was my favorite meal. During my first day in the Philippines, I did what every piece of advice for travel to the Philippines says not to do: I wandered outside the city. I took a public transit bus about an hour outside of Manila and then took another one-hour ride on a jeepney (picture below) to visit a volcano in a city (village?) called Tagaytay. The volcano was interesting and very pretty, but I was simply content that I made it there without any problems, especially since my pre-paid SIM card ran out of money a mere one hour after I purchased it. For a number of reasons, I decided not to boat over to the volcano and instead took a one-hour ride around the area in the sidecar of a motorcycle before getting lunch and beginning my 70km ride back to Manila. All in all, the entire day’s trip cost me about $15, and It was worth every penny. That night and the next day, I visited a couple museums, visited the largest mall in Asia, and took a tour of Intramuros, the old part of Manila that was really devastated by World War II. The tour guide was great and offered a new perspective on the injustices both Manila and the Philippines as a whole have suffered at the hands of other countries over the course of its history. I definitely don’t agree with everything he had to say but also think he had a lot of valid points. In fact, one of my takeaways from my trip as a whole is the incredible mark on history left by colonialism and the impacts still being felt in countries around the world because of it. I spent my last day taking a boat to Corregidor Island, which is where General MacArthur departed for Australia before his subordinate General Wainwright surrendered the Philippines to the Japanese during World War II. Following the surrender of the Philippines, the infamous Bataan Death March began. Our tour guide said something as she took us around that I thought was particularly interesting. The tour guides intentionally take Japanese tour groups on a different tour route so that they avoid areas of the island that depict comfort women in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation. Even today, comfort women is a hotly contested political issue between Japan and other Asian countries, and it was interesting to see that this issue has implications in everyday interactions.

General Comments/Reflections

Several people have asked me what it was like traveling on my own. I admit that, in an ideal world, it would have been best if I had been able to find some friends or classmates to go with me, but a whole host of constraints simply made this infeasible. So, considering the constraints, going by myself proved to have a range of benefits. First, I could do whatever I wanted, eat whatever I wanted, rest when I wanted, all without a set schedule, and then change plans when anything wasn’t working for me. In fact, becoming more flexible/adaptable was a personal goal of mine for my time in China, and traveling on my own proved to be an awesome opportunity to practice. Surprisingly, the fluidity of the trip was one of my favorite things about it, and despite the seemingly haphazard nature of it, I was somehow still able to see everything I wanted. During my trip, I also felt a tangible increase in my level of self-confidence. I learned how to better stand up for myself, assert myself when it’s appropriate, navigate unknown areas, and get myself out of situations that make me feel uncomfortable. There are still plenty of challenges ahead in China, but since I’ve come back from my trip, I feel well-prepared to meet them. I think the outcome would have been very different if I had not taken the trip on my own.

One last parting thought. I think that, as an American, I am blessed in many ways. One of these ways that I rarely consider is the fact that English is my mother tongue. People in every country I went to spoke English to one extent or another, even if it was in a very limited capacity. I can go pretty much anywhere in the world and communicate my needs to others (taxi, food, hotel…) without too much of an issue. How cool is that?!

And that’s it, until next time…

The Singapore Flyer

The view from the Singapore Flyer.

Downtown Singapore from the harbor.

A Singapore Sling at its birthplace, the Raffles Hotel

Pagoda at the Chinese Gardens in Singapore.

National Orchid Garden in Singapore.

Merlion statue that guards the mouth of the Singapore River (I did not photoshop myself into this picture).

Supertrees at Gardens by the Bay with the Marina Bay Sands in the background. The trees put on a light show at night.

Chinatown in Singapore. My hostel was on this street.

Singaporean Chilli crab claw the size of my hand.

Singapore at night.

A glimpse of Kuala Lumpur.

National Masjid in Kuala Lumpur with the volunteer who took me on a tour.

Another glimpse into the feel of Kuala Lumpur.

Jalan Alor market in Kuala Lumpur.

Batu Caves Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur.

A cool bird in the KL Bird Park.

Ladies only train car in Malaysia (also available in Jakarta).

Monkey at the Batu Caves.

Inside the Dark Cave preservation site in Kuala Lumpur (the one with the scary-ass centipedes).

Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

View from the Petronas Twin Towers.

View from the National Monument in Jakarta.

Mini Indonesia Park in Jakarta.

The vans that supplement the public transport system in Jakarta.

A representative picture of the traffic situation in Jakarta.

The president's building at the University of Indonesia with a friend.

Dinner at Lara Djongrang, an incredibly well-decorated restaurant in Jakarta.

A glimpse of an older part of Jakarta.

Tagaytay volcano with boats from a fishing village.

My transport vehicle in Intramuros in Manila.

My driver Joshua in Manila.

San Augustin Church in Manila.

Corregidor Island

One of the artillery batteries on Corregidor.

Corregidor with Bataan in the background.

A Jeepney - an integral part of the public transit in Manila.

马上成功: Year of the Horse 2014

I actually wrote this several weeks ago but didn't have a computer I could use to post it. I'll post another one before school starts next week (really, I will...):

I'm sitting here at the airport in Xiamen (Fujian province) waiting for a flight to Singapore and thought I would take some time to update my blog after almost five months of negligence. Thanks to those of you who sent me friendly reminders and took the time to say hello/ask how it has been going. At this point, there's so much to say that I'm going have to be a bit choosy.

I spent the last two weeks or so in the countryside near Zhangzhou city in Fujian. Since I stayed in China over the winter break, I was able to be here to welcome in the Chinese New Year. The holiday is fifteen days long and is still not over as people continue paying New Year's visits to friends and family. I have a friend who is a third year undergraduate student at Central South University who invited me to stay at his home for CNY so that I wouldn't have to spend the holiday alone, and I took him up on the offer. We spent a couple days in Xiamen exploring some of the sights (Gulangyu and Xiamen Daxue in particular) and eating some of the food. Since Xiamen is a port city, seafood is plentiful. After finishing in Xiamen, we took a car to Zhangzhou. The area where my friend lives is called Hua'an, and I was very content the entirety of my time there. It's nestled in between a bunch of mountains, so the air quality was awesome, as was the scenery. The weather was also moderate with temperatures between 70 and 80 degrees. We had the opportunity to hike several different areas, (attempt to) fish, see some rocks with ancient Chinese writing, go to a bamboo garden/park, visit one of the world's largest earthen buildings, sit in a few hot spring water baths, sing karaoke, and eat some of the specialties in Zhangzhou. There was enough going on to feel occupied but not so much that I felt like I didn't have free time. It's been a long, long time since I;ve felt like I've had such a relaxing break from everything. The food was also very good and very different than food in Hunan. In Hunan, everything comes to you having had some sort of pepper added to the dish. Food in Fujian is not spicy and is slightly more bland, though not in a bad way. People in Fujian also typically start meals off with soup of some sort and are constantly brewing/drinking tea, which is different than what is typical in Changsha. I also have a much better understanding of where meat comes from. I watched a duck get slaughtered and met the little white goat that was going to be my dinner both before and after he had his own separate encounter with the butcher. We raised sheep and a couple other types of animals when I grew up, but my parents must have done a really good job hiding the animals' fates from me. It was not enough to turn me into a vegetarian (meat just tastes too good), but it was dangerously close.

The remainder of my school semester was relatively uneventful. I acclimated to my classes relatively well, but there was still a LOT I didn't understand. It's a process, though, and I'm okay with that. The biggest challenge has been to make sure I pass my classes in the ways that would be expected from me at home. There are simply a lot of differences in the way the educational system works, and not all of these differences would be considered kosher at home. My Chinese has made huge, huge improvements since I first got here, helped in no small part by another friend of mine who helps me study Chinese every week while I help her practice her English. I no longer get tired from hearing/speaking Chinese all day, but it's come at a cost of a deteriorating English ability. Sometimes I take a step back and begin wondering if I'm actually going to eventually forget my native tongue!

It was a bummer not to be able to spend Christmas with family this year, but the holiday period turned out to be an unexpected blessing nonetheless. On Christmas Eve, I had the chance to attend a couple parties that turned out to be much more enjoyable than I had expected. A lot of people I've met over the last several months remembered I'd be spending Christmas in China and made a note to contact me in one way or another to wish me a happy holiday in China. I spent Christmas with Drew, Rachel, and family along with a few of their friends. The food was great and the company was even better. Overall, I was very thankful for how it all turned out.

At the end of the semester in the beginning of January, we had a party as an opportunity for the different MBA classes to interact with one another. Each class was supposed to have at least one form of entertainment to add to the party's program. Our class is small and only three or four of us could attend, which means we only had three to four of us who were eligible to contribute to the entertainment program. One of my classmates roped me into singing a song with her. Naturally, I was terrified because I would be a) singing b) singing in front of other people and c) singing in front of other people in another language. The event had 300 attendees (298, to be exact), and about five seconds before I was supposed to walk on stage, I forgot all of the lyrics to the song. I will never forget the amount of fear I felt in that moment. Thankfully, my brain kicked into gear literally in the nick of time, and it worked out fairly okay, though my singing quality was below sub-par, especially when compared with my classmate who has taken classes and used to sing in bars. Regardless,  I was so, so, so proud of myself for doing something I thought I would never do in 1,000,000 years. I have a couple of pictures, though none of them are very clear.

I know this is a relatively short update given the amount of time that's past, but it's the best I can do for now. Perhaps I'll be able to get another update in before school starts to update on my travels to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. It should prove to be another educational experience...

Boarding the boat to Gulangyu in Xiamen

Eryilou in Hua'an with friends -- the big earthen house

Tea fields (I think this is tieguanyin green tea) in Fujian.

Hiking with friends.

Some ancient Chinese writing on a rock wall.

The view of the countryside I woke up to every morning. The building in the bottom corner is the local Buddhist temple.

I named them Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Actually, one of my favorite karaoke snacks is now roast duck head. No joke.

My classmate and me singing. For those prepared to ask...her husband is in the audience...

The audience for our song.

A New Routine

Not surprisingly, the last few weeks have been a whirlwind. I didn’t really know what to expect as I continued to get settled, and I’ve been both pleasantly surprised and surprisingly challenged. This post will be longer than the last since I’ve waited so long to give an update! Where to start?!

We have a man and a woman who live at the bottom of our two foreign student dorm buildings who help us with the various (and bountiful) problems we have as foreign students. Generally people who are hired to help in this way are called 叔叔(shu1shu1 - uncle) and 阿姨(a1yi2 - aunt) respectively. A little over three weeks ago, 叔叔 came and told everyone on my floor we had to move to another building. Everyone on each floor is the same gender, and they wanted to convert our floor into a floor for women. This wasn’t too big of a deal for me because I didn’t have that much stuff, and I had just arrived. The new dorm also turned out to be better in several small ways that made moving worth it to me. However, several of my floormates found the prospect of moving a bit more troublesome than I did. I’m up and running now (I’m very happy to say), but the move was not without its hitches. When we first arrived, there was no electricity, water, or internet. The electricity problem was fixed by the end of the first day, and they were able to get the water flowing as well. Unfortunately, it took a little longer to get the hot water working. On the bright side, the tenth cold shower is infinitely more easy to handle than the first cold shower, and the weather had been hot enough that I was almost thankful for the temporarily relief from the heat. It also took a couple weeks to get the internet hooked up, but my cell phone kept me sufficiently connected to the world for me to survive. I don’t know how you older folks did it. The day I moved, I also had to go to the police station to apply for my residence permit, which I’ll finally be able to pick up tomorrow.

Drew and Rachel’s son Titus had his 5^th birthday party a couple weeks back. Drew and Rachel put together almost 20 mini rockets for Titus’s friends to paint and then we helped the kids launch them in the field next to our university’s stadium. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and it was cool to watch the kids run after each of the rockets as we launched them.

Our classes officially started on Monday, September 16^th. I’m enrolled in three courses— Macroeconomics, Organizational Behavior, and Operations and Supply Chain—and have two classes per week for each course. Each class runs from 8:20am – 12pm or from 2 – 5:30pm, depending on whether it’s scheduled for the morning or for the afternoon. I had anticipated that I wouldn’t understand anything going on in class, and I can’t say I was too far off. Fortunately, I’ve had experience in two of the three classes I’m currently taking, so the content isn’t too foreign (no pun intended). This means that I can actually keep up better than I thought, and it’s easier for me to absorb the new Chinese vocabulary because I already know most of the English equivalents (marginal propensity to consume, currency markets, fundamental attribution error, emotional intelligence, etc.). My teachers also take very different approaches to teaching. One teacher sits and lectures in Chinese for the full three and a half hours, one uses quite a bit of English and is more interactive, and the last one uses very little English and requires more participation from us students. All of them have their merits.

We had a break at the end of our first week of classes to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival. I spent the day hanging out with one of my classmates. It felt like a normal day to me because it’s not a holiday I’m used to celebrating, but it was kind of fun to experience the buzz it generated in everyone else. As luck would have it, I ate something during the day that I was allergic to, but armed with a 600 tablet bottle of Benadryl, I was much more prepared than when the same thing happened in Beijing (thanks dad).

The MBA program organized a development activity for the MBA students right after Mid-Autumn Festival. Four (out of seven) international students participated along with almost 70 of our Chinese classmates. Even though my class section only has ~25 people in it, there are three class sections, and all of them participated in the development activity. I don’t think I really realized what I was getting myself into until we arrived at the hotel where we were going to stay. We unloaded from the bus and immediately began receiving instructions in Chinese. I hadn’t a clue what I was supposed to be doing, so I had to follow my classmates’ lead. This “deer in the headlights” feeling would turn out to characterize the entire day. We each had to pick up a set up clothes that resembled military fatigues and then put our stuff away in our rooms. For those of you who have picked up on the fact that I have a little more girth than the average Chinese person, you would be right. I had a very hard time finding clothes in the pile that fit me. We broke up into teams, and over the course of the first day, we did all sorts of different team-building games and activities. I’ll spare you the details of the specific activities/games we played and will just say that they’re exactly what you would expect to find in any other team-building or leadership program. At the beginning, our classmates tried to help us foreigners understand what was going on to varying degrees of success. As the day went on, save a few classmates, most realized it would just be easier to have the foreign students only participate when the games required it. I have to admit that I was very worn down and frustrated by the end of the day because of all of the communication difficulties. A little sleep renewed my resolve, and the second day turned out to be much better. I found myself understanding more of what was going on as we continued to complete our challenges. I also found that my teammates made more of an effort to include us in their banter. In the end, I found the two days very much worth attending, not so much because of the lessons the activities taught but because it was absolutely the best way for me to get to know the names and faces of my classmates and give them an opportunity to learn who I am since, after all, I stick out a little bit.

Since I used to work in education and since many of you still do, I figure I’ll take a few minutes to outline some of the differences I've discovered between the way Chinese universities work and the way U.S. universities work. In the United States, college students take an average of four classes per semester. In China, students take nine to ten classes per semester. The classes Chinese students take do not have as much classroom time and are, thus, not worth as many credits. That means that the three courses in which I’m currently enrolled will not be the same three I’m taking in two or three weeks. It’s a nice change of pace because it gives a bit more variety and introduces us to more topics. School holidays in China are also very different. We don’t find out until about three weeks beforehand what days we get off for upcoming holidays. Additionally, in the United States, if you get a Friday or Monday off, you simply lose a day of classes. In China, they move some of your missed classes to a Saturday or Sunday either before or after your time off. At first, I found the seemingly whimsical way of doing things a net negative. It gets in the way of my planning, and it means that I sometimes get surprised by my class schedule/requirements. However, as time has gone on, I’ve come to appreciate the cultural difference I think this difference reflects. In the United States, I think we (i.e. me and many, many other people) like rigidity because rigidity enables predictability and predictability allows us to maintain our fast-paced lives. In China, people don’t treat everything like an emergency and take things as they come. For example, when I went to pick up my books for class, they didn’t have my name listed as an enrolled student taking classes. At home, that would have been a very, very big problem, but here, the administrators just made a call, added my name to the list, and I was all set! Yet another example of this is our daily 休息 (xiu1xi). I don’t know very much about Spain, but I would nonetheless liken it to a Spanish siesta. From 12 – 2pm every day we get time to eat lunch, go home, and rest. School offices are even closed for that time period to give workers a break as well. In the United States, I would guess that that the people who choose not to take a lunch break at work outnumber those who do take time to eat. The same, more relaxed way of doing things plays out in other ways unrelated to education, too. Chinese people often choose to walk instead of using other modes of transportation. In Berkeley, I used to drive five minutes up the road to the store, and, at least thus far, I can’t picture a Chinese person making that same kind of decision! I’m learning to appreciate the value of slowing down a little bit and not treating every situation I come across as an emergency, even if it doesn’t feel very natural.

This past Friday was our first class (as opposed to program) activity. About 16 or 17 of us went to dinner together, and my classmates were very eager to show me the role alcohol plays in Chinese culture. In short, drinking is considered a bonding activity, especially among guys. From my own observation, beer is produced in such a way as to encourage consumption of vast quantities. It comes in 500-600mL bottles, it is only 3.5% ABV, and it is really cheap—less than a $1 per bottle. Apparently, each person is expected to toast and drink to every other person at the table at least once during dinner. I first watched for a little while to make sure no one was giving me these instructions to toy with me, and when I was satisfied, I decided it was best strategy was 入境随俗 (when in Rome…). Drinking definitely does not fall in the category of “favorite pastime” for me, so it was a bit of a challenge to figure out how to be respectful of the cultural elements at play while still setting a boundary with which I was comfortable. After all of the toasting, I decided it was best to “lose” my cup so they couldn’t keep pouring me drinks. Hopefully none of my classmates discover my blog or I’m going to have to find a new strategy next time we go to dinner… We then went to KTV (karaoke)! Karaoke is China and the rest of Asia is much different than karaoke in the United States. In China, you rent a private room large enough to fit your group, choose songs from a monitor, and sing with your friends. Since you’re in a room with people you know (or, in my case, are getting to know), you can sing and act like a complete idiot without having to feel self-conscious. It’s great. The emphasis is really on spending time with people and having fun. You also get to continue eating (fruit, nuts, seeds, water, tea, etc.). Dinner and KTV marked the beginning of my National Holiday break.

If you'll indulge me for a moment, my experience at dinner and KTV sparked a little bit of self-reflection. Over the last several years, I've found it easier and easier to be myself around other people, and I've accepted that my many quirks make me unique. However, as I try to find my place here, I've found it more difficult than I thought to adapt to the cultural differences without feeling like I'm changing parts of who I am. Interests are different, topics of conversation are different, social values are different, individual values are different, and the list goes on. So how do I remain myself and still successfully learn how to connect with the people around me? Simply put, I've come to the conclusion that it will require patience. At least at the beginning of my time here (yes, I still classify this as the beginning of my time here), I think I need to do more listening and less speaking. I honestly don't remember where I read this, but, to me, there is a lot truth in the saying "seek first to understand, and then to be understood." As eager as I am to jump in and find my place among the people here, I think the result will be much better if I take the necessary time to let the process play out. 

That's about it for my adventures thus far! If you have any questions, feel free to email and ask! I also love to hear news from home, even if it takes me a while to respond.

Below are some pictures from my class development activity, some pictures of my dorm room, and some other pictures of Changsha.  Enjoy!

Development Activity:

Central South University and Dorm Room:

Changsha: